Rafe drummed his fingers on the desk for a moment. He hadn’t been expecting a hiccup like this at this stage. Everything had gone smoothly up until now. He’d had no trouble acquiring the stately English countryside manor and surrounding land in Oxfordshire for a bargain price. But the dower house was on a separate title—a minor problem, or so he’d been led to believe by his business manager, as well as the estate agent. The agent had assured him it would be easy enough to acquire the dower house so that the Dalrymple Estate could be whole once more; all he would have to do was to offer well above the market value. Rafe had been generous in his offer. Like the rest of the estate, the place was run down and badly needed a makeover, and he had the money needed to bring it back to its former glory and turn it into a masterpiece of English style and decadence. What was the woman thinking? How could she be in her right mind to turn down an offer as good as his?
He wasn’t going to give up on this. He had seen the property listed online and got his business manager, James—who was going to be fired if this didn’t get sorted out soon—to secure it for him.
Failure was not a word anyone would dare to associate with the name Raffaele Caffarelli. He was not going to let a little hurdle like this get in the way of what he wanted. ‘Do you think this Silverton woman’s somehow found out it’s me who’s bought Dalrymple Manor?’
‘Who knows?’ Margaret shrugged. ‘But I wouldn’t have thought so. We’ve managed to keep the press away from this so far. James handled all the paperwork under cover and I made the offer to Miss Silverton via the agent, as you instructed. You don’t know her personally, do you?’
‘No, but I’ve met her type before.’ Rafe curled his lip cynically. ‘Once she gets a whiff that it’s a wealthy developer after her house, she’ll go for broke. She’ll try and milk every penny she can out of me.’ He let out a short sharp expletive. ‘I want that property. I want all of that property.’
Margaret pushed a folder across the desk to him. ‘I found some news clippings from the local village from a couple of years ago about the old man who owned the manor. It seems the late Lord Dalrymple had rather a soft spot for Poppy Silverton and her grandmother. Beatrice Silverton was the head housekeeper at the manor. Apparently she worked there for years and—’
‘Gold-digger,’ Rafe muttered.
‘Who? The grandmother?’
He shoved his chair back and got to his feet. ‘I want you to find out everything you can about this woman Polly. I want her—’
‘Poppy. Her name is Poppy.’
Rafe rolled his eyes and continued. ‘Poppy, then. I want her background, her boyfriends—even her bra size. Leave no stone unturned. I want it on my desk first thing Monday morning.’
Margaret’s neatly pencilled eyebrows lifted but the rest of her expression remained in ‘obedient secretary’ mode. ‘I’ll get working on it right away.’
Rafe paced the floor as his secretary gathered a stack of documents to be filed from his desk. Maybe he should head down and have a little snoop around the village himself. He’d only seen the manor and the surrounding area from the photos James had emailed him. It wouldn’t hurt to have a little reconnaissance trip of his own to size up the enemy, so to speak.
He snatched up his keys. ‘I’m heading out of town for the weekend. Anything urgent, call me, otherwise I’ll see you on Monday.’
‘Who’s the lucky girl this time?’ Margaret gathered the bundle of paperwork against her chest. ‘Is it still the Californian bikini-model or is she yesterday’s news?’
He shrugged on his jacket. ‘This may surprise you, but I’m planning to spend this weekend on my own.’ He stopped pulling down his left shirt cuff to glower at her. ‘What’s that look for?’
His secretary gave him a knowing smile.’ You haven’t spent a weekend on your own since I don’t know when.’
‘So?’ He gave her another brooding frown. ‘There’s a first time for everything, isn’t there?’
* * *
Poppy was bending over to clear table three when the door of her tearoom opened on Saturday afternoon. Even with her back to the door she knew it wasn’t one of her regulars. The tinkling chime of the bell sounded completely different. She turned around with a welcoming smile, but it faltered for a moment as she encountered an open shirt-collar and a glimpse of a tanned masculine chest at the height she’d normally expect to see someone’s face.
She tilted her head right back to meet a pair of brown eyes that were so intensely dark they looked almost black. The staggeringly handsome face with its late-in-the-day stubble seemed vaguely familiar. A movie star, perhaps? A celebrity of some sort? She flicked through her mental hard-drive but couldn’t place him. ‘Um, a table for...?’
‘One.’
A table for one? Poppy mentally rolled her eyes. He didn’t look the ‘table for one’ type. He looked the type who would have a veritable harem of adoring women trailing after him wherever he went.
Maybe he was a model, one of those men’s aftershave ones—the ones that looked all designer stubbly, masculine and bad-boy broody in those glossy magazine advertisements.
But who went to old-world tearooms on their own? That was what the coffee chain stores were for—somewhere to linger for hours over a macchiato and a muffin and mooch through a raft of the day’s papers.
Poppy’s stomach suddenly dropped in alarm. Was he a food critic? Oh, dear God! Was she about to be savaged in some nasty little culinary blog that would suddenly go viral and ruin everything for her? She was struggling to keep afloat as it was. Things had been deadly quiet since that swanky new restaurant—which she couldn’t even name or think of without wanting to throw up—opened in the next village. The down-turn in the economy meant people weren’t treating themselves to the luxury of high tea any more.
They saved their pennies and went out to dinner instead—at her ex-boyfriend’s restaurant.
Poppy studied the handsome stranger covertly as she led him to table four. ‘How about over here?’ She pulled out a chair as she tried to place the faint trace of an accent. French? Italian? A bit of both, perhaps? ‘You get a lovely view of Dalrymple Manor and the maze in the distance.’
He gave the view a cursory glance before turning back to her. Poppy felt a little shock like volts of electricity shooting through her body when that dark-as-night gaze meshed with hers. God, how gorgeous was his mouth! So masculine and firm with that sinfully sensual, fuller lower lip. Why on earth didn’t he sit down? She would have a crick in her neck for the rest of the day.
‘Is that some sort of tourist attraction?’ he asked. ‘It looks like something out of a Jane Austen novel.’
She gave him a wry look. ‘It’s the only tourist attraction, not that it’s open to the public or anything.’
‘It looks like a rather grand place.’
‘It’s a fabulous place.’ Poppy released a wistful little sigh. ‘I spent most of my childhood there.’
A dark brow arched up in a vaguely interested manner. ‘Oh really?’
‘My grandmother used to be the housekeeper for Lord Dalrymple. She started at the manor when she was fifteen and stayed until the day he died. She never once thought of getting another job. You don’t get loyalty like that any more, do you?’
‘Indeed you don’t.’
‘She passed away within six months of him.’ Poppy sighed again. ‘The doctors said it was an aneurysm, but personally I think she didn’t know what to do with herself once he’d gone.’
‘So who lives there now?’
‘No one at the moment,’ she said. ‘It’s been vacant for over a year